I have been to every size of town and city all over the US and it doesn’t appear leftists a fringe minority. The people that accurately labels themselves as a leftist is probably a minority, but many many people are adherents of left wing views, but with no accessible way to push or vote for their ideals. People will support socialist policies without realizing as well, like guaranteeing healthcare or housing for all. People’s ideas of politics are all over the place in the US.
People when polled like the idea of healthcare and housing for all, but support drops off rapidly when you start getting into the weeds of polling actual policy. At the end of the day, coherent ‘leftists’ i.e. socialist adjacent people are a small fraction of the population, and a small fraction of those people would ever go further than larping or complaining on Lemmy.
The fact is there is next to zero political will for true left wing views to enter the stage, and has been shown repeatedly in the multiple resounding defeats candidates like Bernie have suffered, who isn’t even particularly radical. It’s going to be a long time and a lot of work to get a seat at the table for anything like that, and basically no one is putting that work in productively.
The other option some leftists like the idea of is revolution, but if they can’t leave their bedrooms to participate at the basic level in this system, there is no chance they’ll put the work in to overthrow it.
I have been to every size of town and city all over the US and it doesn’t appear leftists a fringe minority. The people that accurately labels themselves as a leftist is probably a minority, but many many people are adherents of left wing views, but with no accessible way to push or vote for their ideals. People will support socialist policies without realizing as well, like guaranteeing healthcare or housing for all. People’s ideas of politics are all over the place in the US.
People when polled like the idea of healthcare and housing for all, but support drops off rapidly when you start getting into the weeds of polling actual policy. At the end of the day, coherent ‘leftists’ i.e. socialist adjacent people are a small fraction of the population, and a small fraction of those people would ever go further than larping or complaining on Lemmy.
The fact is there is next to zero political will for true left wing views to enter the stage, and has been shown repeatedly in the multiple resounding defeats candidates like Bernie have suffered, who isn’t even particularly radical. It’s going to be a long time and a lot of work to get a seat at the table for anything like that, and basically no one is putting that work in productively.
The other option some leftists like the idea of is revolution, but if they can’t leave their bedrooms to participate at the basic level in this system, there is no chance they’ll put the work in to overthrow it.